"Here's what pissed me off," Johnson said when asked about his previous coments. "The Patriots, obviously, I respect their coach, I respect Bill , I respect Tom Brady. But just because the way that they won the Super Bowls, the Patriot Way, is that how everybody else is supposed to do the same thing? No, it's not. And that's what I got mad at, the arrogance by them.

"There was obviously some stuff behind closed doors. Their owner (Robert Kraft) talking s--- to our owner (Jeffrey Lurie). Bill talking s--- to our head coach (Doug Pederson) before the game. I'm not going to say it, but a lot of s--- kind of built up to that, and I just got tired of hearing about it, man, to be honest."

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After the Eagles secured their trip to Super Bowl LII with an NFC Championship victory over the Minnesota Vikings, Johnson called Brady a "pretty boy" and added, "there's nothing I'd like to do more than dethrone that guy."

Then, a week after Philadelphia's victory to claim the Lombardi Trophy in February, he called New England a "fear-based organization" with players who "act like f---ing robots."

Reflecting on the comments in Tuesday's podcast, Johnson added that he wanted to show his teammates not to fear the Patriots, something he thinks happens often as the result of the team's history of success and the resulting aura.

"I got in a lot of trouble running my mouth, but my thinking was, they give too much respect to these guys, everybody's half-ass scared of them before they get on the field," Johnson said. "... A lot of times before a game, a lot of guys are beaten mentally."

"I saw a defense that wasn't overly talented," Johnson later said. "It was all really about containing Tom Brady. We had a hard time doing that -- he had 505 yards. But that was really it, man. Going into the game, I'm not going to be shell-shocked by it. That was kind of our thing going in. I think we had the upper hand on that."